"It has been a long year. For Americans who care not just about their own families but about the families of those they will never meet, at home and abroad, there is rage and there is broken-winged but vital hope. These are not mutually exclusive. To be alive and aware is to be angry sometimes. To stay alive, on purpose, as well as you can, for as long as you can, is an act of hope."

The Albany airport is our airport of choice. It's big enough to have a decent selection of flights but not so big that the trip from gate to baggage claim ever takes more than ten minutes. Also: it has therapy pets. I've stopped to pet a few dogs over the years we've lived in this area.

The four of us just got back from Florida. On our way out, we met this guy:

His name's Murphy and he's a Newf. The kids loved him:

I did, too, but adopting a Murphy would require an addition on the house.

"Bottom line: The Founding Fathers didn’t fully trust democracy, fearing mob rule, and so created a republic. They correctly worried that a pure democracy could result in the election of a demagogue (ahem), or a charismatic autocrat (ahem), or someone under foreign influence (ditto), hence the rule that a president must have been born in the United States. We know how seriously Trump takes the latter."